Bad, bad cup!

An Acceptance and Commitment Metaphor

There are things in our language that draw us into needless psychological battles, and it is good to get a sense of how this happens so that we can learn to avoid them. One of the worst tricks language plays on us is in the area of evaluations. For language to work at all, things have to be what we say they are when weʼre engaging in the kind of talk that is naming and describing. Otherwise, we couldnʼt talk to each other. If I say ,”Here is a cup”, I canʼt then turn around and claim it isnʼt a cup, but instead is a race car (unless I change the form to a car).

Now consider what happens with evaluative talk. Suppose a person says, “This is a good cup,” or “This is a beautiful cup”. It sounds the same as if that person were saying, “This is a ceramic cup,” or “This is an 8-ounce cup.” But are they really the same? If we all left the room, this cup is still sitting on the table. If it was a “ceramic cup” before everyone left, it is still a ceramic cup. But is it still a good cup or a beautiful cup?

Without anyone to have such opinions, the opinions are gone, because good orbeautiful was never in the cup, but instead was in the interaction between the person and the cup. It looks the same, as if “good” is the same kind of description as “ceramic”. Both seem to add information about the cup. The problem is that if you let good be that kind of descriptor, it means that good has to be what the cup is, in the same way that ceramic is. That kind of description canʼt change until the form of the cup changes. And what if someone else says, “No, that is a terrible cup!” If I say it is good and you say it is bad, there is a disagreement that seemingly has to be resolved. One side has to win, and one side has to lose; both canʼt be right. On the other hand, if “good” is just an evaluation or a judgment, something youʼre doing with the cup rather than something that is in the cup, it makes a big difference. Two opposing evaluations can easily coexist. They do not reflect some impossible state of affairs in the world, such as the cup is both ceramic and metallic. Rather, they reflect the simple fact that events can be evaluated as good or bad, depending on the perspective taken. And of course, it is not unimaginable that one person could take more than one perspective. Neither evaluation needs to win out as one concrete fact.